


Death By a Thousand Cuts

by panchostokes (badwolfrun)



Series: Prompt Fics [108]
Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: And really all the other episodes with minor nick/greg whump BUT, Angst, Episode: s02e19 Stalker, Episode: s03e22 Play With Fire, Episode: s05e24-25 Grave Danger, Episode: s07e04 Fannysmackin', Episode: s10e23 Meat Jekyll, Episode: s15e14 Merchants of Menace, Greg Sanders Whump, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nick Stokes Whump, Soulmate AU, is gonna be WILD and a complete canon divergence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-21 17:53:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30025587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwolfrun/pseuds/panchostokes
Summary: Damage done to a person also translates onto their soulmate's body...Can Nick and Greg withstand each other's damages?
Relationships: Greg Sanders/Nick Stokes
Series: Prompt Fics [108]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1540795
Comments: 12
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deltajackdalton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deltajackdalton/gifts).



> Sorry it's been like, over a month and it's not even the full fic BUT I promise, what I have planned, is going to be one hell of an emotional ride that I am so excited to take with all of you.

It starts, and very nearly ends, with a pinched nerve. 

Nick gripping Greg’s shoulder, tight, hissing at him with an intensity he’s never seen in the man before. He thought Warrick was only half joking saying Nick was “hot.” Greg thought he was hot enough to begin with though he wouldn’t dare say it out loud. 

_ “Watch your back,” _ Warrick warned him.

His back wouldn’t be the only thing marred in the time to come. He thought Nick would just glare at him and let him off the hook, not give him a Vulcan nerve pinch. 

_ “Stop invading my privacy, man, I don’t like it.” _

And that’s when the curse began.

An invasion of their private pains.

A sharing of scars.

Emotional and physical. 

After his little talk with Greg, Nick had felt an odd cramp at the top of his shoulder. While changing shirts—though he wishes he would have checked his options before he had done so, his closet was oddly empty—he noticed faint bruises, the size of which matched up to his own fingers. 

He didn’t think he gripped Greg  _ that  _ hard, and how did it end up on him anyway?

He clears his throat as he stands in the doorway to the DNA lab. Normally he’d just waltz right in, peer over Greg’s shoulder but not only is he approaching with a figurative hat in hand, he doesn’t feel right given the subject matter of the Galloway case—something he realizes he’s leaning into as he watches, no  _ studies  _ Greg from afar, tracking his movements, waiting for a moment to act—

“Hey, G…” somehow the friendly nickname tastes sour. “Greg...can I talk to you?”

“I don’t know, can you?” Greg mutters as he continues on with his work without looking up. Nick must have caught him at his busiest time. He slowly approaches into the room, looking behind him to ensure there’s no prying eyes watching—there was already enough whispers about Nick “scaring Sanders straight.”

In a literal sense.

“Listen, I just...I feel like I mighta been a bit... _ harsh  _ yesterday with the flyer thing…” Nick wrings his fingers together, the tightened nerve throbbing along to the beat of his heart. 

“Don’t mention it. I shouldn’t have teased you so much about it,” Greg shrugs, but he still doesn’t look up at him.

“Still, I-I felt like a high school bully or somethin’ and I’m sure you had enough of those—”

“What makes you think I got bullied?” Greg sneers, Nick watches as the latex over his knuckles tightens. 

“I…” Nick begins, but he just swallows instead. “Anyway. Sorry.” 

It’s a half assed apology but he doesn’t know what else he can do to make it up to Greg, doesn’t know what he can do to ease the pain in  _ his  _ shoulder except put some ice on it, shrink it down and sweep it away like the rest of his problems. 

He knocks his hand on the lab counter, turns to make his leave when he hears the snapping of latex gloves being ripped off of hands, hears his name sighed in the space between the snaps.

“Nick...I was just...I was only proud of you. Wasn’t doing it to make fun, I mean, there was a little fun involved, I don’t think I ever saw Warrick laugh so hard before—”

“I get it,” Nick nods tightly.

“Anyway...I guess…” Greg rises from his chair, walks over to Nick and extends his hand. “I’m sorry, too. Truce?”

“Truce,” Nick smiles, shaking it and instinctively motioning to pat his friend on the shoulder—the same shoulder he pinched and Greg even winces before he catches his hand, hovering instead. 

And that’s when everything changes.

Their connected hands still tangled, Nick’s floating hand peels away the fold of Greg’s lab coat. Gently tugs down on his shirt to reveal the same bruising. 

“Oh, G…” Nick sighs, squeezing his face shut. 

“How’d you know it would be there?” Greg asked in an uncharacteristically soft, small voice. He drops their connected hand, though Nick’s fingers still trace over the imprint he left on the other man’s body. With his newly unanchored hand he peels away his own lab coat, pulls down his own shirt. Reveals his own bruising.

“Who…?”

“Me. I-I know this sounds crazy but...I think this is...I don’t know, some sort of karma?”

“So  _ that’s  _ why you came to apologize, not because you felt sorry for what you did, but because you feel sorry for _ yourself?”  _ Greg suddenly snaps.

“Greg,  _ no,  _ c’mon, man, don’t be ridiculous—” Nick shushes him with a waving hand. “I  _ am  _ sorry for hurting you. I didn’t think...I assumed it wasn’t gonna...hurt that bad.”

“You know what they say about assuming. Makes an  _ ass  _ outta you.”

“And me…” Nick nods into his chest. He licks his lips before he starts talking again. “My brothers used to do it to me when they caught me snooping around their uh, porn mags that they didn’t seem to move around as much as you do,” Nick clears his throat, smiles in reminiscence. “My sisters, too. It hurt, but not as much as...other...things...”

He shakes his head furiously, wondering why the hell he was about to spill the can of beans he’s worked so hard to keep closed, only to crack the seal just a little for Catherine’s benefit.

“Anyway, they always compared it to how big cats often carry their young by the scruff of their neck, ya know?” Nick mimes the action, grabbing the back of his neck.

“You and that damn animal planet. I can’t quite run to Mommy for a kiss to make it feel better,” Greg grumbles as he falls back into his chair and gets back to work.

Nick walks up behind him, places both hands on Greg’s shoulders, and begins to knead into his muscles.

The tension lightens on both of them in just a few moments' time, though Nick cuts the massage short out of fear that somebody was watching when he thinks he hears movement outside of the confines of their brief affair—no, it wasn’t an affair. Neither of them were betrothed. Neither of them were in love, even.

“Hmpf,” Greg pouts when Nick stops, leans his head back. “You know what they say about bullies, the kind that tug at your hair,  _ pinch  _ you?”

“What?”

“‘Just means they like you,’” Greg spins around in his chair. “So...do you like me, Nick?”

Nick’s ears burn and he clears his throat again.

“I, uh, gotta-gotta go, gonna...follow up on some...utility people with Warrick. You know, field stuff,” Nick throws on a smile of forced charm, gesturing his thumbs behind him, he almost trips over the garbage can on the way out before spinning around it and scratching the back of his head, leaving a smug Greg’s view.

Perfect way to end a shift.

He’s in bed hours later, blissfully asleep though his dreams are less than pleasant, dreaming of high school, of the laughter for his interest in science and chess, of the constricting braces and headgear…

Of the bullies shoving him into lockers. 

Knocking his books down.

Punching his shoulders.

Grabbing him by his neck.

Dragging him out to the flagpole, hooking him by his underwear.

They use the flag as a pulley, lifting him higher and higher, and as the bullies grow smaller they turn from the acne-ridden greasy big-head jocks to a distorted version of what he imagines Nick Stokes to be as a teenager; buzz cut hair, varsity jacket, speckles of acne he hides with concealer...and the same big, thick eyebrows, the same malicious smile as he laughs, louder and louder as Greg feels his heart inflating, the elastic on his underpants stretching too thin, it breaks just as easily as the glass that shatters his eardrums—

He falls, and lands on his bed. 

His eyes open before the rest of his body awakens, trapped in a stiff semi-paralyzation, but when his full senses return, he wishes they hadn’t. 

A swollen brain pulses inside his collapsing skull, his chest aches as if he had landed on some sort of bed of spikes rather than the soft mattress he lifts himself off of, which was a  _ mistake  _ he quickly realizes, as his ribs scream at him, two of them feeling loose and almost...cracked, as the jagged split bone pokes his insides.

He rolls to his side and leverages on a sore wrist, unable to twist it without a tremendous amount of pain, not unlike the strain in his neck, too. 

His eyes roll over to the blurry green glowing numbers telling him he had only been asleep for a few hours, he still has time to count a few sheep. 

When the alarm blares telling him he needs to go to work, he calls in a half-hearted slurring attempt to literally phone it in, but Grissom seems uncharacteristically uncaring that he’s calling in a sick day, seemingly...distracted by something else.

He’s distracted too, as he can’t seem to fall back asleep without the feeling that the sheep he’s supposed to be counting are not leaping in front of him, they’re... _ stalking  _ him from behind. Jumping on his back. Whispering in his ears.

Shooting at him.

Greg bolts out of bed, cupping his hands to his ears as they ring louder than the sirens that whiz past his apartment. 

After a few restless, tormenting hours of inexplicable paranoia, he finally rests enough to make it to work just on time, dark circles under his eyes, scratches on his face and neck, bruises on his ribs, a weird sprain in his wrist. 

“You look like death,” Sara gapes at him when she walks in, a file folder in hand. 

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Greg croaks, noticing her scrutinizing gaze at his injuries.

“It’s just that...you look just like...when we picked up Nick from the, uhm…”

Greg scrunches his face.

“From the what?”

“You...haven’t heard?”

“I called off last night,” Greg shakes his head. “Got this weird...bug or something.”

“The same sort of bug that gave you all of...this?” Sara gestures with a waving hand over Greg.

Greg examines his wrist, how he has to hold it in place with a cast that came in an emergency first aid kit his mother gave him instead of a proper housewarming gift. 

“Slept on it funny, scratched my neck with these unmanicured fingers, must’ve hit my head on the end table when I fell off my bed…” he explains simply.

Though he can’t explain the fractured rib and the throbbing concussion, or the dreading sense of being watched or followed or listened to or studied or just…

“Stalked. Nick was...Nick was being stalked,” Sara explained. 

“By the same creep who murdered Jane Galloway?”

Sara nods.

“In one of the tapes he had the Crime Stopper article, and then when Nick and Warrick were going to his apartment to interview him, he pushed Nick out of a window.”

“Holy shit,” Greg cups his hand to his mouth, swallowing down the bile that rises through his throat. “Where’s...where is he, where’s Nick?”

“Right here, Greggo,” Nick’s weary voice makes Greg jump out of his skin, as the aforementioned ghost walks in right behind Sara, his face as sullen as a skull’s, bandages on his forehead and neck, a proper cast around his wrist, a weird hunch to his back, a stagger to his stupor. He looks like a recovering zombie. 

Greg has to pinch himself to make sure he’s not dreaming.

“Nick, are...are you okay?”

“Nooooope,” Nick enunciates with a pop at the end. His eyes are unfocused. Definitely drugged.

Greg’s half tempted to ask him to share.

“Nick, listen, I-I’m sorry about that...Crime Stopper article thing...if I had known,”

“It’s not your fault, Greg,” Nick waves off with an exaggerated yawn, staggering towards the nearby counter to lean on. 

“It is, I mean, how else could he have gotten his hands on one of those articles?” Greg’s nervousness rises as he rubs the scratch on his neck that’s throbbing, as if his blood was pumping against it at full speed against it, but his blood flow was normally, if not slightly elevated. 

Nick, on the other hand, looked like he was being  _ drained  _ of blood.

“Yeahhhhhhhhhhh...yeah, it is your fault,” Nick suddenly agrees in a slow voice. 

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Sara shakes her head, moving closer to Nick and putting her hands on his chest, grabbing his shoulder to lead him out. “Nick! You’re supposed to be home  _ resting...”  _

“C-can’t. Can’t sleep…” he mutters. “Can’t go home. Crime scene.”

Nick brushes past Sara and grips Greg’s shoulders.

“Your fault. This is  _ your  _ fault,” he repeats in a growl as deep as the pool of saliva that spits out in Greg’s face. “You did this! You could have stopped this from happening! Why weren’t you more careful?”

“Nick!” Sara shouts, and another shout follows but not from Greg, who’s rooted to the spot, quivering in the same frozen fear he had when Nick was casually working around an injured bus driver.

Nick’s fingers, as weak as they are, find the same crook between Greg’s neck and shoulder that he had grabbed before, and though he’s not at full strength the pinch hurts nonetheless.

Hurts so much that Nick winces, too.

“There he is. Oughta get a leash for you, Stokes,” Warrick mercifully enters with a heavy sigh, grabbing Nick by the scruff of his neck. 

“Where ya takin’ me?” Nick’s voice suddenly shrinks to softness, the sizzling growl fading to a cracking anxiety. 

“Home.  _ My  _ home,” Warrick clarifies when Nick’s eyes widen. “Bed. Whether you sleep or not.”

“Gotta work the case,” Nick shakes his head as he’s nearly carried out of the room.

“No cases for you, dawg. Hey! Quick looking at Greg like that, I think you’re freaking him out,” Warrick gently shakes him, pulling him in close as they stumble through the halls.

“Greg? Wuh-where’s Greg? I wanna ask him why he’s got a mirror in the lab now. Doesn’t need one. He’s pretty ‘nuff already…”

“And it’s not his fault you know, it’s—”

“Not yours either. Mine, Rick. My fault. I shoulda put a leash on that damn psychic,” Nick wags a finger at the ceiling, his words sour. 

“At this rate, Vegas is gonna be all tangled up. Gonna put those pet stores outta business.”

“And the kink shops.”

“And the... _ what?” _

“It’s Vegas, man…I know tha’ boutique on...Tropicana has’em...” Nick yawns, leaning his head on Warrick’s shoulder.

“Those must be some painkillers,” Warrick laughs with a motion to slap his chest as he normally does when he’s playing around with the man, but his palm hits softer so as to not knock anymore wind out of the delirious man. 

Greg, who’s unable to hear their banter, watches this and is grateful for the respite from a viciously drugged Nick Stokes and is comforted by the sight of him joking around with Warrick, but his trembling hand rubs a suddenly sore chest.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a literal slow burn in this one.

There's no warning, not that there ever really is when disaster strikes. 

No dark clouds swirling in the distance, no sense of finality in a season’s worth of cases told over twenty-two weeks.

It’s just an ordinary day. 

Not even a bad day, also not necessarily a good one...just...a  _ day.  _

He’ll come to be more concerned when things go too right in years to come, because the higher the pride the further it falls. 

But he’s not necessarily happy at the moment. Not sad. 

Just. 

Normal.

Which should be suspicious in its own right. The odds had been set the second he stepped off the plane, and they were most definitely not in his favor. 

However, as of late he’s been sleeping right, been more than a year without a near death experience, been socializing, even almost had some luck on a date recently, which is something he’s found increasingly difficult in his life as a CSI, a life without a set routine to rely on when making plans.

He knows today in particular would be a long one, having just come back from a break between a double and planting himself in the A/V lab with Archie to review nearly twenty audio tapes recorded by the latest victim. Though the tapes were small, Archie estimated that it would be a shift’s worth of hours plus some change. 

They made it about a minute in before they were interrupted by an explosion. Not an explosion of words shouted by frustrated lab employees, not an explosion in his body brought upon by the three burritos he ate for lunch, and not an explosion of any other nature besides a real, proper  _ lab explosion. _

As a kid, he was initially paranoid during his first safety talk in a laboratory setting, a wild imagination exaggerating all of the horrific scenarios of burning alive or losing his vision or being cut up by broken glass—least of all the humiliation that would come with utilizing the emergency shower, though he hadn’t realized until he entered college that he wouldn’t be required to strip down to use it—but the more he worked in a lab, the more he realized that these measures were just precautions, that the chance of an accident decreased exponentially as the non-science majors filtered away, as he grew to work with other careful professionals who did not take the rules lightly—though he’ll admit to having eaten in the lab when he’s not supposed to, or working without a lab coat on the really hot days—

But even in his most reckless years as a dumb teenager and an even dumber frat boy, he had never once witnessed anything besides a broken beaker in a lab. 

Far more than a beaker was broken as without any sort of warning, the core of the crime lab had burst, a cascading shattering of glass and a flaming ball triggered the fire alarms and emergency lights—he had never seen the lab so  _ dark  _ before, with all of the overly lit fluorescent lights snuffed out and becoming one with the new flooring of broken glass in the hallways—it was unnerving, like he had just been plucked out of one world and tossed into another, a darker world, a  _ destroyed  _ world.

A world he realizes, where everybody evacuates themselves before thinking to help their fallen friends.

Even before the dust settles he recognizes the spiky bush of hair laid near the corner of the doorway. The same bush that used to wave at him from across the hall. The same bush that would hover over his shoulder. The same bush that always had a particular way of getting under his skin with its peevish charm, but he’s grown to enjoy it.

And him. 

“Greg!” Nick shouts over the screeching ringing in his ears that’s even louder than the blaring alarms. He had fallen to the ground to avoid the swiping strike of shock waves though he can still feel their heat; a chunk of his cheek feels like it had melted and peeled, his back which hadn’t even been facing the explosion scorched like the striker pad of a matchbox. 

“Nick, c’mon, we gotta go!” Archie shouts at him as he helps Nick to his feet, coughing into his fist. 

“Greg’s in there!” he shakes his head, pointing to the ruins of the DNA lab. 

“The paramedics will get him,” Archie grabs Nick’s shoulder and guides him out, quickly cutting into the panicked parade through the dilapidated hallway. 

“Greg—” Nick pants with a barren mouth, his hand outstretched as Greg shrinks away out of his eyesight, with Archie dragging him along by his wrist. 

The dim orange glow of the ruined building blossoms into an overexposure of sunlight that nearly blinds Nick when they pass through the closest emergency exit. A billow of smoke sneaks its way out above their heads and disappears into the fresh, albeit hot and dry air of a Nevada morning. The members of the lab automatically herd themselves together, before the injured are plucked out by the arriving paramedics. 

“What happened to your cheek?” Archie asks as he continues to drag Nick towards one of the vehicles. 

“Oh, musta...scraped it on some glass…” Nick mutters, his fingers gently brushing the burned flesh. “It-It’s nothin’, man, don’t worry ‘bout it. Greg needs help more than I do.”

His eyes scan for his friend, though he’s distracted after Grissom pats his shoulder with a gesture of approval in his emergency roll-call. Unlike the drills they have run in the past, he doesn’t bother shouting names over the discordant crowd, and with a mind as sharp as his, he seemingly doesn’t need to. The humorously dark part of Nick morbidly compares the man’s actions to a game of duck, duck, goose though the goose is still trapped in the lab, which Grissom runs back to when he sees a barrage of fighter fighters emerge and signaling the other responders for help.

Nick finds himself uncharacteristically frozen, whether it’s shock or the boiling aches on his back warning him not to push his limits, he’s unsure but his eyes do the moving for him, observing the actions of the familiar night-shift faces mingled with the arriving day-shift.

He sees Jacqui with a small scrape on her cheek and more lost than a needle in a haystack. She’s not the only needle, there’s the same look of loss and confusion on everyone’s faces, all the people who thought the lab was one of the safest places they could work in; this is the first major accident ever since...well, ever since Nick started, at least, to his knowledge, and he can easily attest that the lab is more safe than his own house.

Even Hodges is sobered from his arrogant demeanor, hanging back rather than hovering over Grissom’s shoulder as they watch Greg get wheeled into the ambulance. Nick’s heart spikes, his blood not flowing fast enough to reach his immobile feet. His lips part to beckon Greg with a call that’s stuck in his throat. 

Archie seems to be the most physically composed, darting all over the place and checking in with his fellow lab rats, until he worms his way through the disoriented crowd to the door of the ambulance, to make sure that Greg makes it through in one piece.

Nick watches as the ambulance drives away the second the gurney is fully loaded into the vehicle. He finally swallows whatever breath he was holding onto until he saw Greg move—although that could have easily just been a bump in the pavement, his mind reasons—and his eyes continue to search for other members of his team. Warrick and Catherine had just taken their break during their own double, and Nick doesn’t have the attention span to write Warrick a novel-length text of what is going on. 

Sara, meanwhile, is off to the side, sitting on the edge of the curb that she had looked to be kicked to. A dazed look in her eyes, more scratches on her face than Jacqui had. She has one hand cupped in her other, and either Nick is seeing red or there is blood pouring through her fingers. 

He approaches in a forced stumble, but Grissom beats him to her in a flash, and Archie pulls him back by his shoulder. 

“Seriously, man, you oughta get checked out,” he thumbs behind him, and though Nick winces with Archie’s firm grip on his nervous skin, he once again shakes his head. 

“I’m fine,” he growls, tossing his shoulder out of Archie’s grip. “Let’s get back to work.”

Archie almost laughs. 

“You can’t be serious,” 

“Of course not,” Nick chuckles back without a trace of humor on his face. “Feels like we’re in the Twilight Zone or something.”

“There was an actual accident during the filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie back in ‘82.”

“The...what…? There was a movie?” Nick furrows his eyebrows, turning his head towards Archie before holding up a hand. “Actually, know what, I don’t wanna know.” 

“Not like there’s anything else to do…” Archie mutters, and Nick feels a twinge in his heart. He’s right, and he’s being a bit of an asshole, thinking back to the times where he similarly cut off Greg during an exciting burst of information or otherwise mocked him for his interests. A rant about some random sci-fi series might be a good distraction from thinking about Greg...and the pain in his back.

After all, as far as listening goes, Nick’s the right tool for the job.

* * *

There’s a burning itch that just won’t go away. 

It seems to be centralized to the sizzling hole on his cheek—with smaller holes having bubbled and popped and now deflated into tiny flaps of stretched, scorched skin that just  _ won’t seem to disappear.  _

Still, he didn’t get the worst of it. His fellow colleagues were wrapped up in bandages, shaken far more in the inner rings of the blast while he was really one of the furthest from it.

And not to mention, Greg was in the ICU with only the knowledge that he was alive being all they have to go on.

Still, he’ll take it. He’ll take Greg being  _ alive  _ no matter what the damage. It’s selfish, and he knows that, but imagining the alternative, imagining the charred bits and pieces of Greg’s body strewn all over the ruins of the DNA lab is less favorable than imagining Greg laying in a hospital bed covered in bandages.

Archie startles him with a gentle tap on the shoulder, which turns his attention back to the matter at hand, though Archie's seems to be captured by the ruined vanity of Nick's normally chiseled face.

When the case is over, he’ll go see him. He’ll bring him something better than the nasty hospital food, bring him good company and a smile and a peace offering for every mistake Nick has made in their relationship so far—what sort of relationship, he doesn’t quite know because he gets the sense that they’re more than friends, but not quite family. Somewhere beyond friendship, something stronger...but  _ what? _

He focuses back on the work that he has to get through before he can go see Greg, secluding himself into the empty office room to look through records and compare numbers. Numbers that melt together but he’s still able to highlight the same squiggling strings that leap into his watering eyes as he leans forward. He doesn’t stay leaned for long, feeling like his shirt is splitting apart and he briefly wonders if he’s putting on weight before he straightens himself and his back, taking a sharply deep breath and giving his eyes a break by looking through the blinds into the hallway.

It’s hard not to be distracted by the sight of Catherine and Warrick at a crime scene that’s  _ inside  _ the crime lab, just as it’s hard for him not to drop by the DNA lab when he’s waiting for results or prolonging some undesirable task. 

It’s even harder to lean against the window of the lab and look inside, seeing nothing but a shaken snow globe slowly rebuilt by strangers who don’t know where to put the unbroken surviving equipment, or the CODIS machine that Greg once sang a song about, or Greg’s porno mags that he moves around—were they blown to smithereens once and for all, set on the same fire that still seems to be poking at his back—

The same back that yells at him when Grissom unintentionally sneaks up on him during another moment where he can’t help but search the lab for the ghost of Greg Sanders. 

He briefs his boss on what he’s found, brings him into the A/V lab but instead of sitting in the stool on the opposite side he elects to hang back, lean against the back counter that doesn’t feel right, because it’s not the counter he usually leans on when shooting the breeze with his spiky haired colleague...his friend.

Still, he manages to find the light in the suddenly darkened lab, a fresh lead to eagerly chase—he’s practically running down the hall when he spots another light in the locker room, though it's flickering, unsteady. 

Sara plasters a smile on as she confirms that yes, she’s back and it instills both relief that she’s okay and hope that this means Greg will be okay, too. 

However, Sara’s not necessarily what he would define as “okay.”

He’s had one too many near death experiences in his own life by now and with each one, he’s been sort of humbled by it, whether it’s that gun in his face that trapped him like a deer in headlights, or the unsettling paranoia he still gets whenever he’s near a window, it’s calmed him down from his almost...arrogant attitude that he still holds from being a cop, the instinct of training having done almost nothing to help him cope with scenarios that he was tested on in the past. Controlled chaos in a classroom but in the real world, it doesn’t go so well. It’s pass or fail and the wrong move, the wrong word choice can end it all in a flash. 

So when Sara charges into an unsecure apartment building, it sets off all the alarms in his head. A dangerous recklessness that worries not just him, but Brass, too, who wordlessly tells him what happened with a morose expression as he passes by the patiently awaiting Nick—who yes, normally would have joined in on clearing the building but he found it suddenly hard to maneuver in his uniform, the motion of drawing his gun disturbing the reigned in peace of his back that he would just as quickly lose.

“I hear you think you’re indestructible now, Sara.”

He knows he’s sure as hell not. Nobody is. 

“Have you ever had a gun drawn on you, Sara?”

“No,” she answers without looking at him, already knowing the point he was trying to make.

And so he drops it right there and then, but not only because this isn’t the time or place to have such a discussion, but because of what happens when he leans forward to search a drawer.

More ripping sensation only this time, he realizes, it’s not his shirt. Not his vest. It’s his  _ skin.  _ Peeling and ripping itself apart, just like the scorched hole on his cheek. 

He straightens up again and continues the search in a less convenient position, one that earns him some odd looks from the observing officers and a quick one from Sara, too, but soon they bag the scumbag who most obviously did it, and in the process Nick exercises some of his frustration with some snide remarks at the man’s expense. 

It’s not until the officers clear out, leaving Nick and Sara to finish gathering what they’ve collected for transport to the lab, when Nick leans down and the pain flares up all over again that he pops the question.

His bottom lip quivers before he clears his throat to shove down any sense of urgency, or panic when he asks, “Hey Sara...can you...take a look at my back?”

“Why?” she asks slowly with caution and confusion.

“Just, do it, will ya?” he snaps and winces a non-verbal apology.

Sara gently pulls down the back of his collar and a small gasp tells Nick all he needs to know.

“Were you near the explosion?”

“Not close enough for... _ this.”  _

“Nick, you gotta get to a hospital.”

“Oh, I’m going to...to see Greg.”

“Well, get going, then. I’ll take care of all of this. Check yourself in, too,” she tells him. 

He doesn’t. 

He does think about it for a brief moment, as he watches patients be wheeled in and out and oddly longs for the same convenience of transportation that would ease the pain in his back, but it’s the pitiful face of the nurse who sees the visible damage to his cheek that makes him cash in on his machismo and lock the pain away for the sake of Greg.

Especially since he arrives and finds Greg half-asleep, and half-crying, forced to lay on his side while his back heals from the same burns that have scorched Nick, too.

But he’s not going to tell Greg that, of course.

“What happened to your cheek?” Greg croaks out in a hoarse voice when Nick finally sits down after a half-assed greeting that doesn’t go as well as he rehearsed in his head. 

“Bumped into a door,” Nick lies. 

“Was it...really that bad?” Greg’s voice is so low, Nick has to lean in and watch his lips to fully understand him.

“No, no you got the worst of it, buddy.” 

“I’m sorry…” Greg mutters. 

“Sorry, what’re you sorry for?”

“It was my fault,” Greg blurts.

Nick’s face falls, his eyebrows curve up. His voice, which was already soft to begin with, somehow melts even more.

“Hey now, no it wasn’t,” Nick shakes his head, reaching forward and gently wrapping his hand with Greg’s. “It was an  _ accident.  _ Nobody’s fault.”

“Then whose fault was it?”

“Don’t know. Heard Cath and Rick are on the case, they’ll find out.”

Nick’s words don’t seem to appease Greg, who’s staring at the reflection of one of his wounds in front of him, only without the cover of a bandage, so Nick leans it against his fist as he continues to hold Greg’s hand. 

“Why are you always hidin’ things from me?” Greg does smile, but his voice is still heavy.

“I’m not hiding anything,” Nick deflects with his own infectious smile. “Just...masking the pain so you’ll stop worryin’ about me is all.”

“I’ll never stop worrying about you,” Greg snorts. “You’re the most accident prone person in the lab.”

“Speak for yourself, Einstein!” Nick laughs, but quickly sobers when he sees Greg’s reaction. “Sorry. Too soon.” 

A silence falls between the two men and yet it was not an awkward one, a stark contrast from their previous conversations that would run on anxious fumes of either Greg filling the dead air with retellings of his nights on the town, or Nick’s endless amount of sports trivia that Greg is only vaguely interested in, but keeps listening to for Nick’s sake. 

This time, the silence is broken by Catherine, who catches them at their most intimate, the slow burning itches drawing them closer together only to be pulled apart by the fear of a discovery that they’re both on the verge of, but still afraid of to take the final plunge.

“Hey, Nicky...mind if I talk to Greg for a minute?”

“Oh, yeah, s-sure,” Nick stammers, clearing his throat and leaping up off the chair—which was an immediate mistake and the last straw that pushes him over the edge to follow Sara’s demand that he checks himself in—something that the lab must have had a pool on, because when he tells Grissom over the phone that he won’t be in tomorrow, the man uncharacteristically sighs with a breath of “finally,” though part of him wonders if they all knew how bad the damage really was, or if they were just referring to the gaping hole on the side of his face.

“Get some rest, Nicky,” Grissom adds, before they end their conversation. 

Though he’s offered to share the same room with his fellow burn victim, he opts not to, knowing it would just upset Greg further to find out just how badly Nick is hurt. 

And yet really, he doesn’t feel hurt enough as he leans against the wall on the room directly on the other side of Greg’s. His fingers fumble their way up to his cheek as he flicks through television channels with no particular interest in any show except the 24 hour, seven day a week presentation given by Greg Sanders that’s suddenly on hiatus.

Perhaps it’s out of boredom, out of a desire for the nagging itch to be relieved, a masochistic punishment or sadistic pleasure out of the pain it brings him, but his fingers bloody themselves as they pull down on the wound, spreading more of the skin and reigniting the pain that had settled under the influence of the same heavy painkillers that had blinded him before, slowed him down in the face of a crazed man with a gun.

He can’t afford to be painless if it means endangering his life.

Or Greg’s, for that matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think you all know what's coming next and let me tell you, I am so excited for it.


End file.
